Arranging the music of one song...

LeonHeart of the Flame's first posted submission is from Dreamcast (and later Gamecube) classic Skies of Arcadia. By sheer coincidence, I've just been to see STOMP recently - if you ever get the chance, don't pass it up, these guys and gals are amazing and from musical, dance, and showmanship perspectives equally impressive. This mix bares their single-verb title I would assume in a sort of homage, as the intro to this mix - and its salient characteristic - is a great variety of percussive activity. LeonHart brings in acoustic guitar (sounds like a soundfont I recognize from somewhere...), a pipe lead, a questionable but not awful saxophone, strings, a nice synth bell pad, and myriad assorted backup instruments, but it's the drums that essentially take center stage and push the song along. It's quite dramatic, however, and has something of a Celtic feel to it. There's also nice The Who-style "Baba Yaga" underlying, quick synth patterns. While some polish and/or better samples could have been used to bring certain aspects of the melody/harmony up to the level of the drums, nevertheless the overall effect works and is creative and unique, too. Good, promising stuff from LeonHeart of the Flame.

Discussion

I liked the song overall, but it was the percussion that stood
out to me. Though I see that the artist said the rhythm was
monotonous, I thought the percussion was really well done because
of the variety of sounds used! Good mix!

I remember really enjoying the music of the original, and the
game itself was nice, despite the frequent battles and sloooow
battle speed. I remember getting bored with waiting for so long,
so I'd do pushups during the battle animations after inputting
the commands. By the end of the game I was a pretty tough looking
guy.

The track starts off really interestingly with makeshift
percussion in the form of metal hits and the like, and builds a
bit. There are some really cool elements like the super-speedy
acoustic guitar synth (big bonus) and some stuff that is complete
ass, like the out-of-tune midi saxophone (seriously, why?
;_. Also grating to the point of physical pain
is a high pitched *something* that sounds like a bomb falling. It
cuts straight into my brain and is excruciating. The rest of the
mix is good, but I can't listen to something that causes my head
to hurt.

These flaws are all the more frustrating, because the arrangement
is really nice and there is a great texture to the percussion and
a few of the background synths. I think it's a bit empty in a few
spots, but it's still decent, but the pain and the lame sax
sample ruin it for me.

They smooth flute based legato lead does well to contrast and
balance the percussion. Like the boomy low end. Really wish it
had more strings or pad action to fill the song out harmonically.
The song screams for some nice pads. The attention to melody and
percussion helps to offset this. 2:55 was def my favorite part.
Love those type of leads and composition.

I really, really like it, and the more I listen
to it, the more I enjoy it. I agree with the above poster in that
there need to be more SOA themes on this website... short of
perhaps Chrono Trigger, this game had more great rythms than any
other game I can remember playing.

If I might make a suggestion for any would-be SOA remixers out
there, check out Gilder's Theme. It's short, to the point, and
quite subtle, but I also think it has great potential as the song
could go so many directions with the right mixer at the helm.
Check the MP3 out if you get a chance.

Yo, I dig the percussion. Its pretty sweet, though maybe a tad
too continuous. Some more breaks from it would be nice on the
ears. Most instruments are used well, but that sax is hella weak.
Nice nighttime sounds at the end. There's some high-pitched junk
at places like 3:30 that hurt my ears. Enjoyable. Nice job.

Recommended for SoA fans. I really like this piece. It starts out
with some garbage can(literally) beats, then the tune comes in.
But you get my opinion in favor cause it has "my" part in it,
where it starts out high(the note), then gradually goes down. Yah
very very nice.

I submitted this almost 4 or 5 months ago, but decided that I
wasn't satisfied with how it sounded, since it is rather
monotonous in overall rhythm. I thought I removed the file so
that OCR wouldn't be able to get it... but apparently they did.

I'm probably my worst critic on this piece. While I was aiming
for a Stomp reference, I don't feel that I really actualized it
well. The song is technically sound, but not really very catchy.
I'd planned to completely revamp it before I submitted it, but I
suppose I should just be happy it got accepted. Maybe I can
resubmit it and replace it later.

I hate to say it, but I really disliked this piece, which is
unfortunate because the Horteka theme is probably my favorite
song from Skies of Arcadia. I know you were going for that
distinctive "stomp" style, and while you may have achieved it,
the end result just sounds unpleasant to me.

Kudos for mixing a SOA song, though. This game had some really
terrific music, and is under-represented here at OCR. Hopefully
the next remix from Skies will be more appealing to me.

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